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Mike needs Sulima. She’s an astute accountant and he couldn’t run his oil shipping business without her. He was always hot on ideas, but useless with figures. He said so himself, many times.
    ‘Look – I’m not fooling around on this just for the hell of it,’ Carla assures me. ‘We need to know what’s happening with these people as individuals, but their house is also worth checking out.’
    In what way? Do I slip up to the attic or maybe creep down into the cellars.
    ‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’ My controller spits it out impatiently, and I’m instinctively crossing my legs under the table. ‘You’re looking for computer files, letters, e-mails – whatever the fuck it takes … all right!’
    I’m not happy about what I’m being asked to do. I’m seriously considering a toilet break followed by a quick exit. I’ve got a cousin with a farm in a remote part of Wyoming, and I’m sure he could do with some help. But I’m torn, because in a few weeks it will be the 11th day of September. I can still feel the dust in my throat whenever I think about it, so I’ll go through the motions. I won’t find anything. The Sharifs will be clean.
    I’ll have gone on a wild goose chase, and with luck, Carla fucking Hirsch will get off my case. I’ll go back to earning a living of sorts. I’ll stop writing about Osama and his challenges and the difficulties we’re all having getting along with each other. I’ll go back a hundred years and block out a book about Mary Rose and the Fenian rebels in West Cork. OK, it’s an opt out; I’m retreating into a fairy tale world. But I’ve had it with reality; it’s doing my head in.
    *  *  *  *  *
    ‘I’d better go,’ I say stiffly. I want to put some distance between us, but my controller needs me on side. Her cold eyes are morphing into a smile and she’s reaching out to cover my clenched knuckles with surprisingly delicate hands.
    ‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘I know this isn’t easy for you. You probably haven’t done anything like it before … but you have a mother and father, Rudi – right?’
    Yes indeed, and a brother and sister, and they’re all doing fine in L.A. and San Francisco, thanks.
    ‘But if they were in danger, whatever the circumstances – you’d want to help them, wouldn’t you? And if the clock went back, and there was something you could have done to stop those lunatics who killed your girlfriend on 9/11, you wouldn’t have hesitated – right?’
    Of course not. I’d have jumped on Mohammed Atta and I’d have cracked the bastard’s head with a shoe or a plate, or maybe I’d have strangled him. I’d then have yelled at my fellow passengers to pile in on the other jihadists. We might not have saved the day, but at least we’d all have gone down knowing we had done our best to thwart the prophet’s misguided zealots.
    She’s got me over an emotional barrel and her eyes are reinforcing the message as she squeezes my knuckles with her neatly manicured fingers. I’m trying to think of her as a student at Princeton or maybe Harvard. Was she always like this? There’s a powerful presence on the other side of the table, but I’m not getting any frisson of excitement from her touch. The I want you now thing is missing. There isn’t anything even vaguely sexual in our skin contact. It’s irrelevant though. Carla Hirsch has, I’m sure, a higher agenda. I respect her refusal to be deflected. Togetherness isn’t in our current script. She’s photographically attractive, but there’s no point in my conjuring up passionate fantasies about what might happen if we suddenly found ourselves alone and excited in the same bed.
    ‘OK – we’ll debrief when you get back,’ she says decisively. ‘I’m sure the Brits will do whatever they can for your friend, Rashid Kumar, if he’s prepared to cross over. My understanding, however, is that he’s not on our radar at the moment … so I’m hoping he’ll contact you again. If he